when i saw, on the arkansas blog, the teaser, “A local blogger has written—unhappily—that Pulaski Academy won’t send its band to a football playoff game in Helena-West Helena”, i thought this was going to be a flashback to 1993 when the conway high school football team lost to pine bluff in the state championship game. after a searing defeat, some conway fans looked for a direction in which their finger could point. of all places, they found the band, saying that their minimal playing caused the team to lose. yes, you read that correctly: the band’s lack of horns and drums and cymbals. so when i saw this headline, i thought i was in for the same disbelief from nearly 16 years ago.

that, though, is not what i discovered.

what i found was a piece written by the parent of a pulaski academy student exploring the reasons behind the decision for pulaski academy’s band to forego the trip to PA’s first-round playoff game at helena-west helena. her conclusion: social elitism.

the crux of the issue is that the band parents of pulaski academy—primarily composed of privileged white kids—don’t want their kids traveling to a town—primarily composed of poor black people (70% black, over 50% under poverty line)—in which “past events in the area” have caused concern. as the blogger points out, i don’t know what the “past events” are, but i think it’s safe to assume that “past events” actually means “there’s a lot of poor black people just waiting to shoot my child.”

in reading the blogger’s thoughts about the PA band issue, i couldn’t help but to think about the broader story line here. whereas i have strong feelings about (not) sending kids to private schools (especially private, christian schools), i don’t want to just pick on pulaski academy. the big issue is that racism is alive and well and in many ways, more subversive than the out-in-the-open version 60 years ago.

my working thesis here is that the new racism is racial avoidance.

people know you cannot get away with saying you don’t like black people (or any minority group). you simply cannot be blatantly racist without swift and severe social consequences. you have to say things like “past events in the area” or that you just want your kids to “feel safe in their school” or, my favorite, that you moved to a different town because “iron sharpens iron” (a.k.a. everyone looks, thinks and acts like me).

so what can you do? you avoid other races. you move out of little rock. or you move only to hillcrest or the heights. you drive your child across town to go to a certain school when another’s just a couple miles away. you visibly convey your confusion and disdain when a coworker tells you that they send their children to a little rock public school. you drive to walmart 10 miles away instead of going to your neighborhood grocery store just minutes away. you go to church where everyone looks the same as you.

you stay away. you arrange your life in such a way that you only come into contact with black people when it’s inexorable. you avoid.

that’s racism. putting a sign above the lesser water fountain signaling that this is the appropriate fountain for a black person to drink out of is atrocious. but uprooting your life and your family and colonizing with only those who look like you is twisted. avoidance takes long-term commitment to a life separated. it’s lifelong. it’s passed down. it breeds itself.

it’s also much more widespread and “accepted” than outright racism. let’s just put it out there: why do you think cabot is the fastest-growing city in arkansas? one of the notoriously whitest communities in arkansas is the fastest growing? coincidence? maybe. but there’s likely something much more veiled and unspoken than shear coincidence.

why has home schooling skyrocketed over the last 20 years (among several reasons)? why has private school enrollment dramatically increased in urban areas? why am i sometimes the only white person in the entire grocery store that sits right at the foot of the quapaw quarter?

the new racism is underground. it’s unspoken. avoidance is veiled in niceties but is just as or more sinister than what we’ve seen in the past.

it’s time for us to seek out others who don’t look like us. who don’t act like us or believe like us or who don’t share the same cultural customs. learn something. share something. just be around something different.